Free Spirits in a Sonoma Hamlet

UNDER a blinding noonday sun, my boyfriend and I pulled onto the comfortably worn commercial strip of Guerneville, Calif., a former lumber town in Sonoma County. Two men, hand-in-hand, ambled past the mix of rustic, renovated and retro storefronts on Main Street, a backdrop that suggested a dash of San Francisco’s Union Street and Mayberry. A chic restaurant sat near a pawnshop that sat near the Guerneville 5 & 10, whose metal marquee and wooden sign made the place look like a relic from the 40s, which, in fact, it is.

As charming as it seemed, this wasn’t what I had expected.

My boyfriend, Kirk, had billed the trip last fall as a wine-tasting jaunt about an hour west of the heart of Napa, and I had spent the hour-and-a-half drive north from San Francisco picturing low, rolling land, blanketed with grape vines behind carved vineyard signs in gold lettering.

Though Guerneville is technically in wine country, evidence of it was in short supply. What awaits is better. The town sits in an alluvial plain between steeply forested hills, a striking terrain that provides a tourism quadruple threat: a hikable forest, by a navigable river, near brooding sea cliffs, and — appearances notwithstanding — a viticultural designation known for chardonnays, pinots and syrahs.

As if that weren’t enough to entice any vacationer, a large sign on our way into town announced that we were entering “A hate-free community,” our first indication that we were bound for the sort of relaxed gay vacation destination that is open to all comers, even straight ones.

That meant that Guerneville was filled with a collection of people more varied than you’d expect in a town of about 5,000. For every gay couple we saw there was a straight one with children, and scattered in their midst were a handful of aging hippies and woodsy locals. The town’s residents, visitors and that hodgepodge of storefronts on Main Street reflect its transition from timber industry roots to hippie enclave to gay haven.

We ended up staying at a hotel owned by a resident who came in as part of that last wave. Crista Luedtke, a lesbian with a bright blonde faux hawk and a ready smile, first set up shop with Boon Hotel + Spa, just off Main Street, in 2008, before opening Boon Eat + Drink and then partnering with two New York-based publicists to start Big Bottom Market.

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Boon Hotel + Spa in Guerneville.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The hate-free sign, Ms. Luedtke and others explained, was a result of several incidents more than a decade ago in which locals had insulted gay vacationers. The name-calling inspired business owners to band together to declare their town a hate-free zone — as if they could dispel ill will like cigarette smoke. The stores placed “hate-free” stickers in their windows to indicate that they were a refuge for anyone being harassed. It seems to have worked.

As refreshing as it was, simply being awash in tolerance wasn’t going to keep Kirk and me busy for a week. Though our hotel made a good argument to stay put. The entrance opens into a courtyard centered around a pool, a hot tub and a bar, all complemented by gray and shock white décor with orange accents. Our room, like the others, sat on six-foot stilts, above the 100-year flood level of the nearby Russian River.

The day after we arrived we headed to Main Street, where we could visit shops and swim in the river, or take a half-hour walk to Armstrong Redwoods Park to see the last of the surviving redwood giants. Instead, we followed signs in King’s Sport and Tackle advertising kayak rental and arranged for a lazy, three-hour trip down the Russian River. A worker at the shop drove us to our launching point on the river’s edge and as soon as we were afloat, we settled on a leisurely pace that allowed us to witness a steady stream of wildlife. Herons on treetops stood as still as carved wood. On a spit of sand we dubbed Buzzard Beach, 30-odd vultures sunned themselves, some with wings outstretched. A fast-swimming river otter lead us in a watery convoy for a stretch. After the trip was over, arms tired, we cast around for an afternoon excursion and decided on a drive to give our bodies a break.

Again, we faced an embarrassment of choices. Short drives in every direction offered something to see, so we took the easy way out and tooled around in order to try everything. We set out toward the Pacific Coast Highway and within 20 minutes pulled up to fog-cloaked sea cliffs, where we explored walking trails carved amid waves of thick purple thistle. One path led down to the water and onto the dark gray sand. We never saw the end nor the beginning of the paths on the cliffs, and it seemed that we could have spent weeks or even months following their meandering trails.

Our exploration came to an end that day in the tiny town of Freestone, where we whipped a U-turn at the sight of Osmosis Day Spa, a two-story Western-style Victorian surrounded by wildflower, sedge and heather landscaping. We went in and promptly signed up for the works. The next day we returned for a detoxification billed as the only of its kind in North America. After sipping enzymatic tea we stepped into a room filled with mounds of hot, decomposing cedar chips. Kirk, packed in deeply by an attendant, smiled contentedly in the woody heat. I wanted only a thin layer of chips but after a few claustrophobic minutes, popped my feet out for air. Next came a shower and deep lymphatic massages. Our round of treatments ended with audio therapy, which involved listening to a “meta” CD that purported to unite the right and left sides of our brains. Maybe it was our well-rubbed lymph nodes or the cedar fumes, but we fell asleep there and experienced a stretch of lucid dreaming.

The vineyards that I’d been so fixated on during the drive had diminished in importance. But this was wine country, and now, fully detoxified, we felt free to pollute our systems with the region’s finest. Back in the direction of Napa, we wine-tasted our way along West Dry Creek Road, popping into small establishments and chatting up people in various tasting rooms. Our ultimate destination was Bella Winery and Caves, which Kirk had discovered online, about 30 minutes away from Guerneville, on the outskirts of Healdsburg.

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A sign on the way into Guerneville.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

By the time we arrived an intense midday sun made even the Adirondack chairs sitting on cool green grass in front of the winery seem inhospitable. However, the round entrance to the cave, framed with potted plants, promised something cooler. Just inside this large portal, the temperature felt as if it had dropped 20 degrees, and it took our eyes a few minutes to adjust to the elegant low lights from stylish midcentury lanterns hanging from the ceiling of the caves. We joined about a dozen other tasters around the bar sampling the inky black zinfandels the winery is known for before choosing a few to buy.

We continued our Napa-esque tour with a meal at the Michelin one-star restaurant Farmhouse, just 10 minutes east of Guerneville. Surrounded by elegant cottages and barn lofts, and with prices as much as five times our nightly rate at Boon, Farmhouse offered a four-course tasting meal, paired with wine. Highlights included grilled octopus and an entree called Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit, composed of the meat prepared three ways: apple wood smoked bacon-wrapped loin, roasted rack and confit of leg, served with whole grain mustard cream sauce and Yukon potato. Though not fans of merlot, we allowed an impossibly young sommelier to talk us into one aged in a barrel along with the stems, the result of a process called whole cluster fermentation. It put the best zinfandels I’ve tasted to shame.

On our last evening, back at the Boon Hotel, we gathered with Tricia Brown, the chef of Big Bottom Market, her partner and a straight couple from Oakland for an impromptu meal in the courtyard. We opened a bottle of zinfandel we had brought from the Bella Winery to pair with takeout barbecue from the Garden Grill in town. Our group had only just met, yet soon we felt like fast friends.

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“That’s what I really wanted to create with the hotel,” Ms. Luedtke told me later in a description might well be applied to all of Guerneville and its environs. “A cool, friendly place where like-minded people, gay, straight, whatever, can just meet and strike up a conversation.”

Johnson’s Beach (16241 First Street, Guerneville, Calif.; 707-869-2022; johnsonsbeach.com) rents a small number of 1920s-era cabins and a larger number of camping sites along the banks of the Russian River.

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Cedar treatment at the Osmosis Day Spa.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Farmhouse Inn (7871 River Road, Forestville, Calif.; 707-887-3300; farmhouseinn.com) is run by Joe and Catherine Bartolomei, a brother-and-sister team. Reservations in the high-ceiling barn rooms run $595 to $745. Bungalow-style heritage rooms are $445 to $645. Spa treatments start at $125.

WHERE TO EAT

Boon Eat + Drink (16248 Main Street, Guerneville, Calif.; 707-869-0780; eatatboon.com), which recently received a single bib from the Michelin Guide, bills itself as a “modern California bistro.” It serves only Russian River wines and locally micro-brewed beers. Try the house-cured coppa and salami sandwich on locally baked bread for $10.50.

Big Bottom Market (16228 Main Street, Guerneville, Calif; 707-604-7295; bigbottommarket.com) is known for its rustic sandwiches and cheese biscuits.

Farmhouse Inn also has a restaurant that is a destination of its own; it has won a Michelin star. Monday night prix fixe dinners can be had for $49. Meals with wine pairings are $110 to $135. Reservations are required.

Garden Grill (17132 Highway 16, Guerneville, Calif.; 707-869-3922; gardengrillbbq.com) offers delicious food in a comfy interior or the beautiful garden patio under tall redwoods. Or you can simply take barbecue home for $10 a person. Cash or credit card accepted.

An article last Sunday about Guerneville, in Sonoma County, in California, misstated the name of a forest one can hike into from the town. It is Armstrong Redwoods Park, not Anderson Forest. (There is no Anderson Forest in Sonoma.) And the trail head is a half-hour walk, or a few minutes’ drive, from Main Street; it is not possible to walk directly into the park from Main Street.

A version of this article appears in print on June 17, 2012, on Page TR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Free Spirits in a Sonoma Hamlet. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe